


Don't Worry Baby

by goblinish



Category: Suits (TV)
Genre: Babies, Gen, Swear Jars
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-13
Updated: 2011-08-13
Packaged: 2017-12-30 00:51:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,584
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1012070
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goblinish/pseuds/goblinish
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mike gives Harvey a baby, and then he runs. It's super awkward.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Don't Worry Baby

**Author's Note:**

> Hey! So, I have very little understanding of what lawyers actually, you know...do. And even less of what babies do. Fair warning. Caveat lector!

**Don't Worry Baby**

So this is how Harvey's day starts: 

"Oh thank god, take this, please, I'll be working on the Alcene-Poe merger _you gave that case to me_ I have to do my job, right? So clearly I can't deal with this right now. Have fun! Let me know if you need anything but please don't need anything goodbye."

And then Mike is gone, as fast as he'd arrived. 

There's a baby in Harvey's arms. 

\--

There's a baby in Harvey's arms. 

Harvey tilts his head consideringly. He stares at it. 

_There's a baby in Harvey's arms._

Harvey says, "What."

The baby says, "Gra! Ra raaaaaaa," and smiles at Harvey. 

Okay. The baby can stay.

Just for now, though. 

\--

Mike had also dumped a big cloth bag at Harvey's feet. The bag is blue and embroidered with ducks.

It contains a lot of…baby things? Diapers and formula and one of those rubber thingies you stick in their mouths. Binkies. 

The bag also has a book on botany, a half-empty bottle of gin, and a 16-oz bag of chocolate marshmallows. 

Harvey figures those aren't for the baby. 

\--

Right, so, Harvey is good, but he generally needs more information to work with than this. He needs to find Mike. 

Gingerly he settles the baby onto his hip, one arm wrapped carefully around it to support its weight. It keeps, like...leaning, presumably looking for shiny things around the office or something. It's really very worrisome. Babies should just sort of sit there and not take risks. 

Harvey stares at the baby some more. 

The baby drools. Happily. It seems to do everything happily.

Harvey sets out to find Mike. 

\--

Mike sees him approach and runs away. 

The fucker.

\--

Donna stares at the baby.

"No," she says.

"I wasn't-" Harvey starts, exasperated, but Donna gives him the stink eye and he shuts up, because she's right, he totally was. 

Harvey goes off to find Rachel. 

\--

"No," Rachel says. 

"I _wasn't,_ " Harvey says honestly, feeling plaintive now. He really wasn't. "I'm not trying to give it to you, I need _information._ "

The baby is playing with Harvey's cufflink. What the fuck, it's not a toy.

"And you think I'd have that? Because I'm a girl?" 

"Because you're a _researcher,_ " Harvey says.

"Oh," Rachel says, with the grace to look embarrassed. "Look, I appreciate the vote of confidence, but Pearson Hardman doesn't really invest in the same kind of resources..."

Harvey is getting desperate. "I don't even know its name. I don't even know its _gender._ " 

"It's wearing pink," she says blankly.

Harvey shrugs (the baby smiles a little wider). "Its parents could be progressive." 

" _Elizabeth_ is stitched on its hat." 

Harvey takes off the hat, turns it around. Yes, it says _Elizabeth_.

\--

Harvey goes back to his office, puts Elizabeth on his knee, and gives her his cufflink. Rachel comes back a few minutes later with a dizzying array of (sometimes-conflicting) information gleaned from the internet. 

Most of it is absolutely terrifying. He is not reading any more of that fear-mongering. Cave people can do this. He is Harvey Fucking Specter.

He goes back to work. Elizabeth plays with his custom-made cufflinks and hums.

\--

Jessica comes in. She stares, alarmed.

Her expression says, pretty clearly, _Baby. Baby. That is a baby._

"What the fuck?" she asks.

"Swear jar," Harvey says distractedly.

"It's a baby," Jessica says, disbelieving.

Harvey glares at her. "College fund."

Elizabeth's hat is upside-down on the desk. It is a delicate, nauseatingly sweet shade of pink, and there are already a few other bills inside it. Jessica blinks, puts a twenty inside, and walks right back out. 

\--

It's just that Elizabeth is clearly smart. 

Once, she leans out to grab the far corner of the paper Harvey is reading, and her drool drips right on the sentence that makes the whole thing come together. Harvey re-reads the sentence and something just _clicks_ , and his understanding of the case radically re-aligns.

He just thinks she may have an aptitude for the law. It should probably be encouraged. That's all he's saying. Elizabeth should be encouraged to expect great things of herself.

\--

Harvey's cufflinks, his tie clip, and his watch are on his desk. 

"So if they merge these departments" - Harvey nudges one cufflink towards the other - "they get rid of a lot of wasteful spending, with minimal job loss. If the company kept hemorrhaging money, a lot _more_ jobs would be lost within the year. This is the neatest solution. I'm going to present it to Bennington tomorrow."

"Ha! Ehr," Elizabeth says, and bounces on Harvey's lap, waving her hands up and down joyfully. In the process she smacks Harvey's watch aside, and it falls to the floor.

"Exactly," Harvey says, pleased. "They knock down the wasteful spending."

See? Clearly a genius.

\--

It's a good thing people keep swearing in front of Elizabeth. She's definitely going to be going Ivy League. She'll need the funds.

\--

Shit, Harvey thinks.

"Shit," he says.

"Swear jar!" Donna calls merrily through his intercom, and Harvey puts a twenty in Elizabeth's hat. 

He picks Elizabeth up under her armpits and lifts her into the air. 

It doesn't help. She's still wailing.

"Elizabeth," he says sternly. He is not panicking. "Tell me what's wrong. Everything can be solved with a little communication."

But Elizabeth just keeps crying. 

Oh god why. 

\--

Right, but then: _Louis_ is good with the baby. 

Louis.

He coos at her, and Elizabeth grabs for his tie. 

She stops crying.

Louis changes her, makes up a bottle of formula, and hands it to Harvey. 

"You do it," Harvey says. 

Louis shakes his head. "I have a lunch meeting. I don't have time." At the door, he turns back. "Oh, and don't forget to burp her." 

He leaves. Elizabeth starts crying again. 

Harvey stares at her, aghast. "You like him?" 

He hugs her. It's not her fault. She's young and impressionable. 

She cries.

\--

The wailing dies down to these quiet, hiccuping sobs. She clings to Harvey, wrinkling his four-thousand dollar suit. She hides her tear-stained face against his chest and shivers miserably. 

This is _horrible_.

\--

He gives her a piece of paper from the Darlington file. She grips it tightly in her fist, and finally begins to look a little consolable. 

Harvey breathes.

\--

Elizabeth has been pretty content for the last hour, but Harvey has also discovered a marvelous secret.

"Hey, Donna!" he says into his intercom, delighted. "Did you know these rubber mouth thingies were so useful?"

"Binkies?" Donna sounds wary. Harvey doesn't know why. 

"Yes, yes, binkies. Donna, it's like a mute button!"

Beat.

"That's wonderful, Harvey."

\--

By two, the entire Darlington file is destroyed. 

Harvey's tie clip and one of his cufflinks are missing. 

He doesn't need a tie clip, anyway. He can't find his tie. 

\--

Mike pokes his head in at five to find Harvey stretched out on his office sofa, Elizabeth snuggled up on his chest. Harvey's hands rest protectively over Elizabeth's back, and his pale dress shirt is clutched tightly in one of her tiny fists. They are both sleeping peacefully. 

The floor is strewn with papers. Harvey's jacket is thrown over his desk chair, a spit-up stain across the back; Elizabeth's pale pink hat is on the corner of Harvey's desk, resting drunkenly on its side and overflowing with crumpled twenty-dollar bills. There's a half-empty bottle of gin leaning haphazardly against the wall, a few chocolate marshmallows smeared into the carpet, and a faint haze of baby powder in the air. There's also some odd, indefinable smell permeating the room that Mike thinks is probably just _'There Has Been A Baby Here.'_

Harvey's eyes open. He looks at Mike and frowns.

"What do you want?" Harvey whispers, crossly. 

Mike tilts his head to the side. "I have to return her to her mother," he whispers back, smiling. 

"Why?" Harvey answers, still cross. 

"Because." Mike carefully extracts Elizabeth from Harvey's hold and settles her on his hip. She wakes, fusses half-heartedly, and then curls into Mike's side, asleep again just as quickly.

"Good night, Harvey," Mike says gently, and heads out. 

\--

Harvey is fine with this. 

Really, totally fine.

He works until ten and goes home to an empty apartment. 

There's a knock on the door. Harvey answers it. 

"You okay?" Mike asks.

"Of course I am."

Mike walks in without an invitation. He dumps his work bag on the floor between the couch and coffee table, strolls over to Harvey's fridge, and takes one of Harvey's beers. At least he has the decency to hand one to Harvey, too. 

"Bird - that's El's mom - said it was obvious that El had fun at Pearson Hardman," Mike says, sitting on the couch and taking out a case file - his copy of the Darlington, Harvey thinks. "I told her it was my boss who mostly had El."

Whatever. 

Harvey sits on the couch beside Mike, and returns his concentration to the papers he'd already spread on that side of the coffee table. It's the Bennington case. 

Harvey takes a drink of his beer. "What kind of name is Bird?"

"Short for Roberta," Mike replies. "Anyway. She wanted to know if she could leave El with me next Tuesday." 

Mike does not look up from his work. The Darlington file must be really interesting. No wonder Elizabeth liked it so much. 

"Sure," Harvey says. "As long as you don't fall behind on your work." 

"Oh," Mike says, and he is smiling. "I'm pretty sure I won't."

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted here: http://suitsmeme.livejournal.com/2038.html?thread=2287606#t2287606. The prompt spoke to me!
> 
> I find children hilarious and frightening in equal measure and am deeply embarrassed by the way the little parasites make me feel warm and gooey inside. Also, Harvey's joy over discovering that binkies make kids stop crying is absolutely not based on a true story about the only time I have attempted to babysit.


End file.
